Editor Of Cool

Hank Stuever: According to everyone, Clay Felker's New York magazine was the best. "Clay Felker's New York" is a phrase that refers to a man who died yesterday (at age 82, at his home in Manhattan, from throat cancer) and the magazine he started and edited -- first in 1964 as a Sunday supplement to the New York Herald Tribune, and then relaunched on its own with Felker's last dime at the time, in 1968, until Rupert Murdoch wrested it away from him in a 1977 takeover.

It could also be about a place that is always in a state of vanishing, a New York City before everyone caught on, a New York in the throes of constant reinvention and trendification, a place where the idea of radical chic was born and so was the national cult of Ken Kesey and so was a case of Saturday Night Fever. Clay Felker's New York was a magazine written and designed by and for the coolest people who ever lived, and, to the degree that they're still around, they'll never let you forget it.